Few visitors driving through Hout Bay on the way to Chapman’s Peak Drive will have failed to notice in the sea below the road a curious concrete and steel jetty - usually the resting place of a number of cormorants drying themselves in the sun! This marks the most immediately visible remnant of one of the Cape’s most remarkable early mining ventures, the Hout Bay manganese mine.
The curious jetty (The Heritage Portal)
Although the dense forests surrounding Hout Bay – hence its name - had been noted by Jan Van Riebeeck and the settlement there had grown slowly but steadily it is astonishing that a further two centuries were to elapse until, in 1873, we find the first written account of the existence in the mountains above Hout Bay of the valuable metal manganese:
“On the 19th November [1873] I went to inspect another manganese mine in the vicinity of Hout Bay. Leaving our horses beyond the block-house in charge of a herd, we ascended the Noordhoek mountain by a very precipitous route, and after an hour’s stiff climb reached a rough track formed by a winter torrent, along which we stumbled over several specimens of the ore; these had been washed down no great distance. Guided by Capt. E., I came to the...
